Many valid and reliable screening tools are available for use in epidemiologic studies and health services research (e.g. the Rose Questionnaire for detecting angina pectoris in a general population survey (Rose, 1962)). These tools are usually brief and amenable to different modes of administration (e.g. mail questionnaire, telephone, in-person interview) and therefore can be easily incorporated in field studies. The absence of such a tool to broadly (not clinically) measure oral health status means that oral health is often ommited from major studies in epidemiology, health services research and gerontology. The major goals of this project are to develop and validate a brief epidemiologic instrument to measure oral health status. This deliberately brief (ideally 10-15 questions) oral health screening tool will be able to be added to existing interview formats and could become part of major regional and national research efforts. The instrument will facilitate the integration of dentistry with mainstream measures in epidemiology, health services research, and gerontology. The preliminary version of the tool will be sent to a large sample of dental researchers and clinicians in order to solicit opinions on utility of the various questions. A reduced version will be evaluated in small focus groups of epidemiologists and clinicians. The refined, final version will be further evaluated in Phase II of the project. It must be emphasized that this screening tool is not specifically intended as a diagnostic aid, but rather as a valid measure of a broad range of oral health indicators.